


A Thousand Lives

by jusrecht



Category: Super Junior
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2777237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyuhyun paid the price of one betrayal—with a thousand lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Totally forgot about this fic until today OTL 
> 
> The rating is for some descriptions of rape, blood, and war.

The house stands silent, a relic of a thousand ghosts under a frowning sky.

He remembers dying. He remembers death. He remembers the last despairing thought that held his soul captive even as his lungs breathed their last.

It was of regret. Always.

And the house always greets him upon dying. 

His legs know this ritual well. He steps into the house, past the silent, empty verandah. Behind the front door is a long, endless corridor choked full by shadows, the murky walls lined with mirrors instead of doors. 

He walks past the first. The second. The third. The fourth. Each and every one of them bears a blackened surface, reflecting nothing. He walks on—tenth, thirteenth, fortieth, into hundredth and beyond. With each step, the wooden floor yields a broken moan, but he keeps walking. 

Until he finds a mirror unsullied. 

The face he sees in the mirror is not his own. He was dark-skinned and short, but his reflection stands tall, as pale as a ghost, crowned with black hair and dark eyes.

He takes a deep breath. This is his one-thousandth chance. 

This time, he will be in South Korea.

This time, his name is Kyuhyun.

 

.

 

He was a prince once upon a time—before the house and its mirrors existed. 

Siwon was the king’s soldier, a lowly warrior with the courage of a lion. Kyuhyun fell in love with his smile. With his beautiful heart. With his relentless daring as battles raged all around them.

What they had was the stuff of dreams. Lingering glances behind tall white columns. A kiss amongst the olive trees. A secret tryst under the shroud of a glittering sky. A touch, a caress, a love blooming in secret, birthing all things forbidden.

And like all dreams, it ended when the stars faded and reality marched in.

Love without courage was a chrysalis. It was useless. It was ugly. It could not be anything, let alone a beautiful, majestic butterfly. When the king's fury smote them, Kyuhyun cowered in fear. When the accusations shifted to the lowly soldier, he said nothing. When lashes rained on Siwon’s back, he did nothing.

And when the final punishment came, he stayed in his room—and did nothing.

Little did he know, Siwon’s screams would haunt him for the rest of his life.

 

.

 

For the rest of his _lives._

(As he would soon discover from the house of mirrors.)

 

.

 

In the first mirror, he was a girl of fifteen.

Siwon was an enemy warrior who had come to plunder her city. He slew her grandmother and her screaming aunt, and then he watched, indifferent, as his fellow warrior and friend seized her by the hair, tore her dress, _raped_ her. 

Even through her tears and wracking sobs, she recognised him—the man she, _he_ had betrayed. She screamed for his mercy, but his eyes flicked past her as a stranger’s would, drawn, instead, to the gilded trappings on her wall.

In the end, it was his friend who took mercy on her and killed her.

 

.

 

In the second mirror, he was a court official.

Siwon was a high-born lady, a favoured niece of the emperor. For twenty-seven years he sought and sought, memories weighing his bones, all in vain.

Until one day. He beheld her by chance, a wrong turn, a misstep, a glimpse behind a bamboo screen—the small upturned nose, the perfect mouth, the _soul_ of his lover.

For that one look, he paid with his head.

 

.

 

In the seventh mirror, he was a minstrel in the court of an English king. 

Siwon was a nobleman’s son, a dashing knight and the favourite darling of many court ladies. 

The minstrel fell in love at first sight. The knight, on the other hand, barely glanced in his direction. He laughed and flirted freely with the ladies, full of grandiose verses and declarations of love. Then he kissed them and seduced them in dark alcoves behind thick curtains. A mere minstrel did not interest him. A sweet voice did not move him.

Many poems and songs moaned the misery of an unrequited love—and the minstrel sang them to the end of his life. 

 

.

 

In the fiftieth-or-so mirror, he was a seventeen-year-old girl when they met.

It was her _débutante_ ball. Siwon was a stranger amongst hundreds other strangers in a ballroom of twirling beauties. He was tall, charming, handsome, armed with a smile that easily won the entire world, along with her heart.

The moment he appeared and asked for the next dance, she knew. He took her hand, gently guiding her as they glided about the room, she in white and he in black. He laughed and talked and teased rosiness from her cheeks, his arm firm around her waist. This close, the world transformed into spinning colours and sensations—and for the first time in her life ( _lives_ ) she was perfectly happy.

They had one dance. Then he kissed the back of her hand and disappeared into the crowd.

She never saw him again.

 

.

 

The one-hundredth mirror was filled with the smell of gunpowder. 

He was a German soldier in the Great War. Siwon was someone from the other side, and they would not have met if not for the Christmas Truce.

It was a moment of insanity, buried in thick snow and biting cold. They laughed with each other, sang with each other, got drunk with each other—although they could not understand each other. 

Then came the shared look. The brief touch. The moment of secret understanding. 

Quietly, they separated themselves from the rest of the group. Deep in the forest, bare in winter, they found what privacy they could. The rest was a mere coda of the series of insanity. He remembered tracing his lips on a dimpled smile. A kiss that tasted like cigarette and rum. Hasty fingers fumbling for hungry touches. High-pitched moans breaking free from his throat’s desperate clutch.

None of it could last. There could be no tomorrow for _them_ , but war burned logics and skewed all perspectives.

Kyuhyun did not expect to see him again.

Except he did. 

(In a trench, lying in a pool of blood and guts, limbs blown to pieces.)

 

.

 

Some two or three hundred mirrors later found him in a glittering age.

By then, he had tasted the bitterness of a hopeless love only too often. This one, however, taught him that he knew nothing yet. 

New York in the 20’s made a spectacular backdrop of opulence and decadence. He was a poetess in love with another woman, a celebrated actress. She was her muse, her dream, her life—everything she lived for.

And she never looked at her.

There were many degrees to unrequited loves. This one towered over the rest when twenty-one years of worship and adoration splintered into madness. Hopeless and aimless and beyond reason, she took a gun and killed the only love she had ever known.

And still the unrequited love remained. 

 

.

 

There are many others still.

In one, he was a doctor who failed to save Siwon’s life. In another, a whore who could never catch Siwon’s eyes. In yet another, a boy of fifteen lured by the brilliance of summer and the sea’s shine to take a plunge and kiss his best friend.

Just before said best friend’s smile turned stony. 

The day after, he was gone. Kyuhyun never saw him again. 

For his endings never change.

 

.

 

These, he has realised since the third or fourth mirror, are given chances.

Behind each mirror lies another chance, at a different place and time. Sometimes it’s a kingdom across the sea. Sometimes it’s a brightly-illumined city. Sometimes it’s a ballroom, or a rowdy club, or a quiet street, or a crowded station. 

Sometimes they meet. Sometimes they are strangers passing each other on the street, two ships meeting in the middle of the night, amongst countless nameless faces. Once, they spend an entire afternoon sitting back-to-back in the same coffee shop—and Kyuhyun only realises it when Siwon’s back has disappeared out of the door.

Sometimes they are lovers torn apart by time, others by circumstances. Sometimes they don’t even meet.

Only three things are constant. One, he always falls in love.

Two, Siwon never does. 

And three, he is the only one who remembers.

 

.

 

Kyuhyun doesn’t remember in wholes but in flashes. Splinters of moments and fragments of colours. Shadows of smiles. Ghosts of caresses.

Some of these will rise in his mind when their shoulders brush, when their voices twine, when Siwon laughs and offers him a glimpse of what could have been, once upon a time. These diamonds of memories stab him like ice—bleed in his mouth like regret.

Because his endings will never change.

And so Kyuhyun does nothing. He ignores a laugh that tinkles too bright, ignores a hand that lingers too long, a gaze that brims with affection and warmth. There are only so many times a man can fall apart and still piece himself back together into a semblance of a whole. 

He teaches himself to be deaf. To not feel. His heart still yearns (so much, painfully so), but nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine mirrors have taught him that hope is countless poisonous little thorns. 

This, he tells himself, is better.

 

.

 

“I love you.”

Only three words. And yet they burst through his defences like thunder. Kyuhyun stares, half unseeing. His head is full of ghosts that wail and cry in anguish, weighed down by a thousand failures. He knows, he admits, he believes that his endings will never change.

This is the one thing he is certain to be true.

“What?”

Siwon glances at him once, twice, wrought by nervousness. “I love you,” he repeats, and this time he holds their gaze, no matter how unsteady. 

For a long time, Kyuhyun only feels numb. Even his pounding heart is a faraway sensation, overwhelmed by the thick mist of disbelief. The words are slow to sink in and every fibre of his being rejects their validity. They cannot be true.

But the next time he blinks, he realises that tears have spilled from his eyes.

“Kyuhyun?” Siwon sounds panicked—upset, even. His touch, when it comes, lingers awkwardly on his arms, full of desperation and flickering hopes.

Kyuhyun draws in a sharp, shaky breath. “You’ve never said it before,” he hears himself say faintly.

Siwon bites his lips in guilt. “I… I’m sorry that–” 

“No.” Kyuhyun shakes his head vehemently. “It’s me who is sorry.”

Siwon’s expression crumbles. “Because you don’t feel the same.”

“I do!” Kyuhyun blurts out, dizzy with the sudden surge of too much emotion. “It’s not that… I really do.”

An uncertain smile touches Siwon’s lips, but his grip on Kyuhyun’s arms are firmer now. Warmer. “You really do?”

“Yes.”

At the next second, Kyuhyun already finds himself engulfed in Siwon’s arms. And suddenly nothing else matters anymore. He weeps and laughs at the same time, the tiny crystals of his forgotten memories disappearing in the warmth of Siwon’s presence. He can almost feel them peeling off his skin, dissolving into thin air, leaving only the person he is now.

Cho Kyuhyun. 

The one loved by Choi Siwon.

“I made you wait for far too long, didn’t I?” the loving voice murmurs in his ear.

Kyuhyun finds the answer easily in his blissful heart, in the lopsided grin that insists to stay on his lips. “As long as you’re here now, loving me, what do I care about waiting?”

Siwon’s smile is the answer of a thousand prayers. 

This time, Kyuhyun vows to himself, he will fight. He will guard this love with his life.

He will make them right. 

 

**_End_  
**


End file.
